How looking after a Border Collie gives me purpose
When I was fourteen I asked my parents for a dog. They found one in the paper. Bobby was to be my dog, and I was to feed and train him. I did my best, putting his dried food into a clean metal dish every night and filling up his water. I went to training classes. Overall, he was a good companion, but we got some things wrong the first time — he wasn’t sufficiently socialised at a young age. Partly we only got him at six months so the formative period was already well underway. He was timid and nervous and on a couple of occassions nipped people. He was close to being put down, but wasn’t in the end and lived to an old age. I wasn’t really ready for the responsibility of a dog and didn’t know what to do in terms of training and looking after him properly. I wasn’t mature enough myself, and I made mistakes.
Twenty years later, we got another puppy… I had just got engaged to my darling Bizzy and as an engagement/christmas present she bought a dog from a cousin whose collies had recently had a litter. This was the last puppy left in the litter, and aware of the well distributed sticker campaign of the Dogs’ Trust, knew a dog was “not just for christmas” and checked with me that I’d actually want one. Though aware of the responsibility of dog ownership — you have a sentient being’s life in your hands — I jumped at the chance. Bizzy had not only offered to bring a new best friend into my life but to help me look after her. It was a project that would bring us even closer together, with the shared responsibility and shared joy of walking, feeding and nurturing a young collie called Bonnie.
Bonnie likes music. We play guitar to her and sing, particularly “My Bonnie Lies Over the Ocean”. She also likes when we play jazz music on the laptop, or the sleep YouTube dog tv channel. She didn’t like Rage Against the Machine as much, perhaps off put by the naive idealism of the politics? I wouldn’t like to speculate. I played her “Killing in the Name” and she looked unimpressed. I wonder if she sees war as an inevitable companion to capitalism more than a neo-crusader war between religious factions, though religious fanaticism is certainly a factor in global conflict surely it’s mostly down to economics and power and the thirst for control through regime change? but I digress…
As I write at the laptop on the cluttered table her head pops up between my arms and licks my chin. She just brought a plug over that was lying around, sealed in plastic, and handed it to me. I have done my best to “puppy proof” my annexe but my hoarding is such that there’s always something lying around. My friend Johnny taught me the trick of watching her out of the corner of my eye to see what she’s up to as I get on with one of the many varieties of work that make up my portfolio career as a mentally ill recently graduated creative in my 30s.
Bizzy has a dog called Molly. Her and Bonnie get on mostly. Molly taught Bonnie to dig on the bed for imaginary guinea pigs, which we call GPs. This ruins the sheets but is amusing. We have other friends with dogs, such as Pitrie and Piglet, but Bonnie has yet to meet them. Bizzy told me how Molly has saved her life on more than one occassion. Not in the “What’s that? Timmy’s stuck down the well?” way, but by getting her out of the house and walking when there was little urge to get out of bed, or in darker times thinking of her dear canine friend and how she would be without her. She thought I would benefit from a similar sense of responsibility. I have been somewhat preoccupied with my own mind, thoughts, and problems since the age of 19 when I had my first psychosis, and spent a week in a psychiatric hospital. Dealings with psychiatrists, psychologists, psychiatric nurses, occupational therapists, and other professionals have been de rigeur for the past decade and a half. I take medication morning and night, and have been in hospital every four years since 2002, save last year, which somehow, thank God, I have stayed home. Now I am getting married in two weeks, and have completed my Masters in Fine Art, and things seem to be going pretty well. This is thanks to the support I have had from Bizzy and my family and friends, as well as the mental health team, and in no small part, in the last couple of months, to the anxious joy of looking after a little dog. I think she will play a bigger part in my continued recovery, as I go on increasingly long walks with her as she grows, and have her constant company. She is as close as I need at the moment to a child to look after, a dependent bundle of joy that is my shared responsibility to rear into healthy adulthood, and share the ups and downs of life. As I sign off, Bizzy is throwing a Kung Fu Panda soft toy for Bonnie to fetch and she swings him around the room as she brings him back. She is more entertaining than the best Netflix series, the new Aphex Twin release and the last collection of Leonard Cohen poems combined. She is my little furry friend, and Bizzy says will become my best friend, even though she rips the insoles out of my shoes. Thanks Bonnie.
